Boston...

I have nothing much to add.  The actual news will be along when there's data, so pointless to speculate.

But terrorism has been such a part of my life I suppose am desensitized.  I remember seeing my father on TV lowering the food bucket in the Balcomb St Seige, Then DS Peter Imbert, later Commissioner, got a bunch of credit, and soon to be DCS along with Paddy O'Neill who did a bunch of stuff too but he wouldn't talk about it because of the family issues, who also became a DCS.  Later we were watching TV when Ken Howorth, a family friend died defusing a bomb in Wimpy on Oxford St.  In 1980, a controlled explosion happened on a street corner I'd been on a few hours before with my brother.

In fact, being aware of bags and packages was such a normal thing for us to have to do, I still do it today.

The one thing I've always taken from it is life, however shitty, goes on.

Direct Marketing Done Wrong...

Every few days I get something like this in my inbox...

We checked out your Chicon7 app on Google Play. Good work on that!


We can make a great looking demo video for your app in HD quality, complete with voice over, running on a real device like the Samsung Galaxy S3, iPhone 4S, Nexus 7, Galaxy Tab 2 or the iPad 3!

I get something similar for Renovation too.

Weirdly, we still have active users for the Renovation app in India.... we're still trying to figure out what 10 people a day get out of an app for a convention from 2011...  answers on a post card.

A Sense of Community...

I should be filing in a design brief for a supplier of Infographics, except it's early and I need more coffee before I do that so I thought I'd follow up from something we were discussing at the Seattle Tun meeting.  For those that don't know, the meeting is based on the first Thursday meetings the London SF community have, except it's on the second Sunday...

I came into SF fannish things at University, while there were a small number of us that played AD&D at school, several weren't all that into SF, at least not like I was.  Getting to University, with a large and active SF Society was a revelation for me, not to mention that the local 'public' SF group was large, well organized and amazingly well connected.  I think Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett (while still at the AEB) were the first people I saw at the Preston SF Group in 1987...  I didn't actually get to a convention until 1994, an Eastercon, in Liverpool.  But some of the people I met that first week at Lancs Poly in September 1987, or the PSFG in November, or even the Adelphi Hotel 1994 are still friends and we still are in contact.

When I ended up living in London dealing with the aftermath of a divorce which left me pretty damn close to bankrupt, I was able to joke that at least I got Fandom in the divorce.  And London Fandom, through people I knew from conventions and got to know, involves people and friendships still strong after 15 years, even living 5000 miles away.

In the 1990s with the interwebs, I came across newsgroups and internet discussion boards and met a whole new layer of people.  Some of whom are now personal friends, some of whom are still arms length trollbait (yes, Jordan, I am looking at you)...

So I've been lucky with fandom.  Privileged, which I think works in this context, to have come into convention fandom via close and well connected friends, and lucky to have met some fantastic people.  This has been pure luck, and I can certainly agree that going to a convention or fan meeting the first time, face-to-face can be fairly daunting, but also rewarding.

The topic on Sunday was about Community and if the people newly entering Fanish things through Blogs and the like were lacking the sense of community that something like Newsgroups gave you and if what fandom is lacking is a place where, on the whole, everybody will be.  And I think this is probably what's driving some of the generational issues I'm seeing.  It's almost as if there's genuine surprise that people who have come to self identify as fans are shocked to find that there are other people out there who've been doing this a long time and actually know different groups of people.  I don't think it's really an issue of online fandom meeting convention fandom for the first time... I think it's different groups of fans meeting for the first time in different online contexts without having had a standard meeting place.

It was Newsgroups, it was Livejournal...  Blogs don't seem to have that mechanism for community where everybody will easily pass through and chat.  There's probably a new community tool needing to be built, and not just for fandom.  

Facebook is actually lousy for this.  Google+?  Not sure.  Twitter is frankly crap for it and the need for different Twitter IDs for different things is a challenge for many people if you keep personal and professional separate.

I don't have an answer to this problem.  It just seems that for all the talk of the online world being public and connected, it's actually quite lonely and spread out in a way that fandom didn't used to be.

Oh Really....

Data used to support current austerity arguments could be due to an error in an Excel Worksheet.  Colour me shocked.  Shocked I tell you.

Thanks to theweaselking

Cool Blogpost: The Fascism of Knowing Things

Thanks to supergee for this excellent article on "The Fascism of Knowing Things"

My belief that we are not always equipped to make the best decisions is apparently the alibi that has always been used by people like me who wish to oppress “the common man”.;

While being exasperated about another post I'd read about privilege and elitist oppression I mentioned elsewhere that it felt like I was watching Rik Mayall in The Young Ones screaming "Fascist" at anybody he disagreed with as if that would stop any onward discussion.

I've had arguments with libertarians in the past where I've been accused of being elitist by expressing a sentiment that actually it's really really hard for anybody to be an informed, rational, individual in the modern world, especially when it comes to making healthcare decisions, or picking a doctor or planning for financial safety.  I include myself in that group of those struggling to make good decisions btw.

I also wonder if many of the people who talk about the power and smarts of the individual have spent much time with the individuals they cohabit with.

On the subject of The Young Ones, there's an excellent quote here from Alexi Sayle which somewhat explains all of this.

Working on a product brief for a supplier

In case you're wondering why I've been posting a lot.  It's hard going and aimed at graphic design which is something I really struggle with.

I might need an early lunch.